'There now!' exclaimed the stranger; 'it is our nature to desire a
monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
memory in the universal heart of man.'

'We're in a strange way, tonight,' said the wife, with tears in her
eyes. 'They say it's a sign of something, when folks' minds go a
wandering so. Hark to the children!'

They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard
talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the
infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild
wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to
be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his
brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.

'I'll tell you what I wish, mother,' cried he. 'I want you and father
and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away,
and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!'

Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm
bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the
Flume--a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch.
The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and
stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song,
which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers
hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
night.